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Oxford Skollers

Jeff Skoll has had perhaps the greatest impact so far of the generation of philanthrocapitalists that emerged from the internet era. As we write in the book, Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, who hired Skoll as the website’s first ceo, has struggled to find an effective strategy for his philanthropy, Omidyar Networks (although things […]

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Ringing a Bell

The Nasdaq stockmarket honoured the book yesterday by inviting Matthew to ring the closing bell. It was great to see “Philanthrocapitalism” up in lights in Times Square! Oddly, this did not prevent the Nasdaq index falling. Nasdaq has played an important role in philanthrocapitalism, by hosting the initial public offerings of several companies whose leaders […]

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Profit: for and against

Matthew’s probing of Muhammad Yunus’s position on the role of profit in scaling up micro-finance at the World Business Forum seems to have irritated Felix Salmon, who blogs for Portfolio magazine in a post Philanthropy vs Profit. Felix puts forward two arguments: that for-profit microfinance has failed to help the poor, citing the example of […]